


Council of the Pines

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: Dreams, F/F, Ficlet, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 21:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7008859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long after the battle of Pieta, Clare has one last ghost to visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Council of the Pines

After Clare turns north again, meaning to say her goodbyes to Pieta's dead, she finds herself dreaming of cold places. Sometimes the dreams are lonely, sometimes peaceful. Sometimes they feel like going home. 

In this dream, she stands on a mountainside where a path diverges, looking down on a cabin surrounded by spruce and red cedar. The little house looks inviting from a distance, but she knows that if she took the road down into the dell, she'd find nothing there any longer. She climbs instead. The way up is long and steep, and the sky darkens as she travels, from late afternoon to twilight to night until the stars are shining in patterns she almost knows. Time passes as it does in dreams, fluidly, with no consistent pace. All she knows is that she walks – for a long time, or no time at all – through air that smells like evergreens and fresh-fallen snow, until she reaches a cave set high up along the ridge and surrounded by a shelf of level ground.

There's a fire burning outside, smoke rising pale through the darkness, and a cast-iron kettle hanging on a tripod above the flames. The woman waiting there pours two cups as she approaches, and lifts a hand in a gesture familiar enough to make Clare's heart ache. She's thought about what she might try to say, if she were to face Jean again. _I'm sorry. I've missed you. I should have been stronger._ In the end, she doesn't need to say any of those things, only to take her place beside the fire, accept the dark, bitter smelling drink she's offered, and sink into a silence made comfortable again.

When she breathes in the steam, Clare recognizes the drink as dandelion tea, stronger than anything a dream ought to offer. Jean had taught her how to prepare it on the road north, those many years ago, and it stuck in her mind like the scent of beeswax and lavender pomade or the words to folktales from a territory not her own, just one of the many things she hasn't forgotten and hasn't had any use for since.

 _It's not bad_ , Jean had said, and it costs nothing. _There aren't many things you can say that about._

Clare sips her tea, bittersweet and still hot enough to burn, and thinks about how true that is.

“You said goodbye to me a long time ago, didn't you?” she says. “But I never said goodbye to you.”

As she says it, she's struck by the image – memory within memory – of Jean walking beside her through the forests of her mind, only to vanish when looked at straight on. But this Jean only watches her with eyes that gleam golden in the night, and says, “Is it me you're talking to, or yourself?”

“I don't know,” Clare says. “Maybe I came here to find out.”

And then she shakes her head, not sure what she believes, or whether she's holding back laughter or tears. Maybe it doesn't matter.

“The dead are dead,” she says. “I know that. It's not right, holding on to them too long.”

“Then don't,” Jean says. She sets her cup aside and rises, then kneels and places her palms on either side of Clare's face, threading fingers through her hair. She feels _real_ , in this illusory landscape, real as the scent of smoke and the taste of dandelion root and the heat of a fire crackling in the dark, and Clare understands the danger of living too much in memory.

It's a good thing, she thinks, that Jean never wanted that for her. It's a good thing that she doesn't want that for herself.

“You'll be gone tomorrow, won't you?” Clare says. For good, she means. Not like Luciela or Rafaela or Irene's fainter shadow. Like the people who owned the cabin down the hill and left it empty. Like Teresa.

Jean doesn't answer. She brushes a thumb over Clare's cheek like she's wiping away a tear, then leans forward to kiss her, careful as she ever was in life and with the same banked heat that Clare remembers, the same hint of teeth. Clare pulls her close enough to feel her phantom heartbeat, and they stay like that for a long while with their arms wrapped tight around each other, their breath mingled, existing in their own quiet bubble of night and firelight. Then Jean stands, pulling Clare up with her.

She's smiling. She's smiling like she had seven years ago in a field of crimson-stained snow, but there's no blood here, only the night and the mountainside and the last remaining warmth of a soul that Clare knows was always meant to fly.

“You don't belong to the dead,” Jean says. “We're not your burden to bear, and – I'm glad you chose to live.”

 _It wasn't a choice_ , Clare wants to say, _I had to, so I did_. But when she thinks about Raki and Priscilla and Teresa, and everything that's happened since, it's hard to say whether or not that's true. She knows what Jean would say, though, and she knows what she needs to say in turn.

_Thank you. I'll miss you. Be free._

The words are suddenly easy. She pulls Jean into one last hug and says them all in a whispered rush, simple as breath and blood and survival, and when she's done saying what she needs to, she closes her eyes against unshed tears and lets go. When she looks up again, the sky is growing light on the eastern horizon; it hasn't been long, she's sure, but time is strange in dreams, and it's almost morning. Jean is gone, but there's no surprise there. And if Clare sees a flash of blue in the corner of her eye, a small shape flitting on the wind, she doesn't question it.

When she starts down the mountain, she goes alone, feeling light and empty of sorrow.


End file.
